The prisoner had a ruffled look: perspired: had lost control of his eyes, which shifted helplessly; trying to hide; trying not to see; trying not to comprehend.
“Not guilty, he says,” roared the policeman on guard at the prisoner’s side: it was nothing to the policeman; a policeman twenty-one years. It was everything to the damp young man in the dock.
He compressed his lips; squeezed his pale fingers into knots; tried to concentrate his wild gaze on the iron rail a foot from his nose; but couldn’t.
“Evidence?” said the magistrate absently. He was thinking of this and that.
“This lady,” said a policeman with a jovial face, but with a scornful voice, “informed me the prisoner had been following her on the street – singing under his breath –
“Singing,” repeated the magistrate.
“So I arrested him.”
“What did the accused say when arrested?”
“He denied the charge and tried to break away.”
“Ah! Did he use violence?”
“He broke a bag of eggs he was carrying.”
“That’ll do,” said the magistrate. To the lady he said:
“Did this prisoner follow you on the street?”
“M’hm!” said the lady who was just out of her youth, and had rarely if ever been pretty. “He walked along behind me all the way from Bathurst to Spadina, and kept humming –
“Singing?”
– “Singing all the time – right behind me!”
“Did you molest this lady on the street?” demanded the magistrate.
“No – no! I saw no lady – I was going home there was no lady – I was hurrying along – “
“Were you singing?”
The prisoner clamped the iron rail with both hands.
“Yes,” he said, hoarsely.
“What were you singing?”
The prisoner rolled his eyes, licked his lips, made a fearful effort to smile: turned whiter than death.
“Home Sweet Home,” he replied.
Seven persons in the court sniggered. The other sixty-three hadn’t heard: were paying no attention.
“Home Sweet Home,” repeated the magistrate.
The other sixty-three in the court began to pay attention.
“Yes, sir. That was it.”
“Was that it?” asked the magistrate.
“M’hm,” replied the lady,
“Why were you singing? Had you been drinking?” asked his Worship.
“No-no! It was five o’clock – and after – I was going home – you see – I had the eggs and the ribbon and the white wool-“
The policeman on guard looked sharply at the prisoner and drew one pace further away.
“Is he quite right?” asked the magistrate, sotto voce, of the policeman at the witness box.
“I doubt It,” scornfully replied the jovial policeman.
“What’s the matter with you?” demanded the magistrate.
The prisoner bowed his head and his mouth trembled.
“I saw no lady – nobody – I was going home,” chanted the prisoner: “and the policeman took my arm – I broke the eggs. Yes, I was singing: I remembered that. But what about my wife -“
You should have thought of that first, my man,” put in the magistrate.
“-she is only a girl,” went on the prisoner, head down, chanting, “she’s little and afraid and she’s – she’s – she’s not very well – she’s making little clothes – and I was not to forget the Beehive1 four-play – white wool – now I’ve been out all night – maybe I’ve lost my job – and she’s been sitting at the front window – maybe – maybe – “
A great light of comprehension lit up the magistrate’s face.
“Discharged!” he cried.
The lady looked indignant, What should she tell her friends now, for goodness sakes?
The policeman on guard had been a policeman twenty-one years; he opened the gate of the dock and automatically roared “Order!” to fill in the time.
The prisoner, without a hat, feeling in his pockets for the wool and the ribbon, ran out the door of the courtroom exclaiming –
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
Editor’s Notes: I’m not sure what the point of the story was, don’t sing or hum suspiciously?
“If we were hoboes,” said Jimmie, “we could just climb aboard a freight train and dangle along through the lovely country…”
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 3, 1934.
“As servants of the people,” said Jimmie Frise, “we are not paying enough attention to the weightier problems of to-day.”
“I guess we haven’t got the equipment,” I agreed.
“We waste our time,” went on Jim, “making little unimportant experiments with pickling, furnace pipes, rabbit hunting and other minor domestic quarrels.”
“I would love,” I said, “to be a great authority.”
“It is easy to become a great authority,” stated Jimmie. “You just give up everything else, you forget about money, about your wife and family, you just concentrate yourself on one subject, like humming birds or radio tubes or something, and work sixteen hours a day at it and dream about it fitfully all night, year after year for thirty-five years. And then, when you are seventy-one years old and hump-backed and half blind and your family has all grown up and left you a quarter of a century ago, and you have no friends left, and you die, you get your picture in the papers and underneath it says, “The great authority on humming birds.””
“I don’t mean that kind of authority,” I hurried. “I mean a sort of authority that just comes by his knowledge instinctively, like poets – you know? – just born with an understanding of some of the mysteries of this life. I feel I have such an instinctive knowledge about the poor and oppressed. I sort of feel that, but for the grace of God and a little accident somewhere in my boyhood, I would have been a tramp myself.”
“I often feel that way,” mused Jim. “Sometimes I marvel that I have a house to live in.”
“Maybe everybody feels that way,” I suggested.
“I doubt it,” said Jim. “I think you and I have a deep sympathy with bums because we know, deep in our own hearts, that if it hadn’t been for some guidance we got as children or some friendly expectation we felt from our olders, we would have been hoboes.”
“And all the world to see,” I cried. “There is no reason to suppose that a hobo does not appreciate landscape as much as we do, and we have to pay big money and reserve expensive berths and staterooms to go abroad to look at mountains and the sea.”
“If we were hoboes,” went on Jim, “we could just climb aboard a freight train and dangle along through the lovely country and whenever we saw a beautiful lake or a lovely range of hills, all we have to do is jump off and stay there until our eyes and souls were filled. Maybe, by jove, maybe hoboes are artists at heart, poets and dreamers, who surrender all the world that they may saturate themselves in beauty!”
It Ought to Be Law
“Most artists I know,” I submitted, “look just one jump removed from hoboes.”
“Did you ever hear of the Sabbatical year?” asked Jim.
“I probably did as a child,” I guarded.”
“In ancient Biblical days,” says Jim, “every seventh year was a year of rest, like the seventh day. In the sabbatical year, nobody was allowed to work or till the earth. It was a year of rest. Some of the universities allow their professors a sabbatical year, and they go on holidays, with full pay, for the whole year!”
“I missed my calling,” said I.
“The old Hebrews were a wise bunch,” said Jimmie. “We make a big mistake when we aren’t fundamentalists. We should take Moses whole. We should have never surrendered the sabbatical year. Every seventh year, every man in this world ought to be allowed to turn hobo. Bankers, mechanics, newspapermen.”
“Where would you head for, Jimmie, if you turned hobo?”
“I’d head for California,” said Jim. “First, I would go to California and visit Tia Juana and then, at the right season, I would amble across to Kentucky and see the Derby and lie around on the blue grass for a month or two. Then, maybe, I’d stow away for England and see Ascot. Ireland, I’d like to see Ireland too, and spend a couple of months around one of those famous studs where they raise Irish hunters. But what about you? What would you do?”
“I’d start my sabbatical year,” I said, clearing my throat, “in May. I’d start via the Nipigon and then across to fish British Columbia, up to Alaska, finishing Alaska about August. Then I’d catch a boat for New Zealand, arriving there just as the brown and rainbow trout season opens about October first. I’d fish all around New Zealand until maybe February, and then stow away for the south of France, fishing through the Pyrenees and up and across into Devonshire by the first of April, then slowly, stream by stream, up to Scotland…”
“Wait a minute!” cried Jim. “Your sabbatical year is up!”
“Won’t you let me catch one salmon in Scotland?” I asked indignantly.
“You’ve got to be back in Toronto on May first,” stated Jim. “But it is a swell idea, that sabbatical year.”
“It ought to be law,” I declared.
“We ought,” said Jim, with that thoughtful, looking-away expression he wears when he is putting something over, “to just try a little of the hobo life, to see what it is really like. I mean, here we set ourselves up as the friends of the poor, but we don’t bark our shins grabbing freights. How about some day putting on some old clothes and going for a short trip on a freight?”
And that is how it came about that last Monday Jimmie and I sneaked off at lunch hour and went heme and put on our old hunting clothes and peak caps.
Grabbin’ a Freight
“Better take a few dollars each to get home on,” I suggested, as we admired ourselves in the mirror in Jim’s hall.
“Not on your life,” said Jim. “As artists, we must not only play the part of hoboes, we must be hoboes. Don’t let us take more than about 30 cents each, in dimes.”
“Suppose we get away off by Orillia or some place?” I inquired.
“Don’t be silly,” said Jim. “We aren’t going more than twenty miles. Freights always stop at sidings. We’ll go an hour or so one way, then hop off and catch another one coming into the city. Just to get a taste, not a bellyful.”
Jim had found out that one of the best places in the world to catch a freight is in the Mimico yards. There vast hundreds of acres of train tracks and sidings, thousands of empty box cars, long trains of loaded cars are assembled.
“We have to watch out for dicks,1” said Jim, as we headed for the railway yards.
With caps pulled over our eyes and shoulders tough and legs kind of bowed, which is any man’s way of feeling tough, we slunk through Mimico to Church St. and up to the subway. We were instantly in the core, the centre, the heart of railroadom. Turning in at the subway, we found ourselves in a vast region densely striped with hundreds of tracks and thousands of cars, with engines slowly puffing through, some drawing immense endless strings of cars, others steaming fussily about alone, and gauntletted railroad men, in overalls and peaked caps, leaning athletically out from cars and engines.
Hidden from us by strings of cars, engines puffed by us, and we heard the crunch of gravel under the feet of men which we could see by stooping down and looking under the cars. But they were railroad men’s feet. No bums did we see in the half hour we spent prowling up and down.
Two tracks away, we heard a string of cars shunt.
“Dere’s one haulin’ out, pardner,” hissed Jim. “Let’s scram on board, huh?”
We crawled underneath two strings of motionless freights and came out alongside the train that was still creaking from the shunt.
Three cars to our left, we saw an empty box car with its door ajar about two feet.
“Dere she is, buddy,” hissed Jim. “Lemme see how smart you are at grabbin’ a freight, huh?”
We scrunched low and made the dash.
Jim boosted me through the open door, and swung himself inside with professional smoothness.
“She’s headed west,” said Jim. “That means either Detroit or maybe Winnipeg. We’ll go as far as Brantford or Aurora.”
Cr-rash! shunted the train. You could hear it coming, but still it nearly knocked you off your feet.
“These freights are rough,” said I.
“You get used to it,” said Jim, walking to the door to peek.
“Nix!” he hissed. “Flat against the wall! Here comes a brakeman!”
We hugged the wall of the freight car as we heard footsteps crunching nearer on the gravel.
The footsteps stopped. We held our breath.
Then the brakeman reached up and with a grunt slammed the car door shut, and we heard a metallic clink and he threw home seme kind of a bolt or latch.
The footsteps died away.
“He locked us in!” I whinnied.
“Take it cool,” said Jim. “We’ll figure this out.”
“But we may not get out until we get to Vancouver,” I wailed, “or Des Moines!”
“We stop plenty of places,” soothed Jim. “All we have got to do is holler.”
“One brakeman and one engineer can’t hear us holler half a mile away,” I said loudly. “Let us holler now!”
“Hey,” roared Jimmie promptly. “HALP!”
“Halp, HALP!” I echoed, kicking the wall of the box car.
I will not embarrass you with a full stenographic record of the noises, yells and signals that we engaged in for the next ten minutes. Then we stopped because we were hoarse.
“She hasn’t started yet anyway,” said Jim.
“Maybe, Jim,” I said, as we sat on the floor, resting our lungs, “maybe this is one of those empty cars they store at Mimico until next summer.”
“It might be,” agreed Jim.
“Maybe nobody will come by,” I quavered, “and we will die of hunger and thirst. And maybe this car will not be used until they move the wheat next July.”
“Cut it out,” warned Jim.
“And we will be missing until next August,” I went on; “when they will find our desiccated and mummified bodies out in Weyburn, Sask.!”
The Free-Faring Life
“Stow it,” warned Jim.
“We have no identifications in these clothes,” I went on. “I’m going to spend what strength I have left now in carving my name on the wall of this box car, Jimmie, and if I am spared long enough, by the pangs of hunger and thirst, I will carve on the wall the details of our horrible experience. So people will know what became of us.”
An engine came puffing in the distance.
“Get ready,” cried Jim, leaping up in the dark. “Hoy, HOY, HAAALLLPPP!”
But the engine went thundering and hissing by.
“No use,” said I, sadly. “Let us save our strength and listen for footsteps. Surely some bum will come by.”
So we sat and listened. Occasionally, to break the monotony of conversation, we hallooed and yelled.
“It must be getting evening,” surmised Jimmie.
At about what must have been nine o’clock by the silence of the world, broken only by the thunder of passing trains, Jim suggested we take turns at having a little sleep. I slept first. But cinders are poor mattresses. I woke to find Jim snoring by my side.
“HAAALLLP!” I roared, but really to wake Jim.
“It must be getting towards morning.” Engines went by, trains, long, long trains, went by, going to Winnipeg, Vancouver and Des Moines.
“This,” said Jim, heavily, “might be one of those silk trains that make non-stop runs across the continent.”
“It is like being lost in the middle of the Sahara desert,” I said, hollowly. “Here, in the midst of a great freight yard, on the edge of a mighty city, we are lost as if we had flown in a rocket to the moon!”
We dozed again.
“Clink!”
We both sat up to face a foot-wide strip of God’s morning light streaming in and dazzling us. We made out the head of a man, a villainous, stubble-covered face peering at us with amazement.
“Hullo, said he. “Did I startle ye?”
Jim and I swallowed, poising for a spring.
“Kin I come in?” he asked, reaching up for a hoist.
“We’re getting out,” said Jim.
“All right,” said the hobo, “make it snappy. She’s just about to pull.”
Jim and I went through the narrow crack together. The tramp hoisted himself up and in.
“I hope yer not leavin’ on my account,” said he, looking down at us.
“No, no,” we assured him.
We hurried toward the Church St. subway.
“Ah,” cried Jim, as we hastened down toward the street cars in the fresh dawn, “the free-faring life of the hobo!”
But I was thinking about bacon and eggs and I didn’t want to be interrupted.
Editor’s Notes: This story was reprinted in Silver Linings (1978).
Here Jimmie means Railroad police, who would look for hoboes to remove them from the trains. They could also get quite rough. ↩︎
“Bo” is short for hobo and is part of hobo slang to refer to each other. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Eileen Wedd, October 25, 1930.
“What makes the leaves fall off?” asked the five-year-old.
The two were staring up at the oak tree. With every sigh of wind, leaves drifted down.
“It’s God makes them fall,” said the elder.
“Why doesn’t God make them stick on?” demanded the small fellow with mild indignation. “They are prettier sticking on. It would be summer then, and we could wear gym shirts.”
“God makes the fall off,” said the elder, who, being nine, speaks with a fine note of scorn in making these explanations of life’s mysteries. “He makes them all fall off, and pretty soon the trees are bare naked. The way you are in the bath.”
“And you, too,” put in the small boy.
“I bath myself,” corrected the elder. There was a distinction. “Anyway, God makes the trees naked. He turns the grass brown, it rains and gets cold, and then comes the snow.”
“Sometimes He leaves it summer,” said the little one.
“Never!” said the elder. “It always comes winter. He never leaves it summer.”
“I remember when it was all the time summer,” began the lesser, about to give reminiscences.
“Haw!” snorted the big brother. “You’re only five. What do you know! God never leaves it summer. It just goes round and round, winter, summer, winter, summer. You’ll find that out.”
“If Dodo asked God to leave it summer, He would,” said Five.
“No, He wouldn’t.”
“For Dodo He would.”
“Dodo wouldn’t ask Him,” said Nine briefly.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“For fear He wouldn’t,” said Nine. “But you don’t know about things like this. All you do is see the leaves fall down. Then comes winter. Wait and see.”
“Well,” said the small chap, “why does God go round and round like that? Why doesn’t He make it summer for a long, long time, and then winter for a long, long time?”
“Because,” said the elder, patiently, “God is just like Daddy. God is a man only very, very old. He is far older than granddad. He is older even than the world. Now you see daddy every morning. What does he do? He gets up, he goes downstairs and turns on the heater. Then he comes up and shaves.”
“First he looks in at me,” said Five.
“All right, but listen. This is how God is. Daddy shaves, and he stands there in front of the mirrow, putting powder on his chin, and he brushes his hair over and over, and puts on a clean shirt and then he goes in to mother’s room and says, ‘How do I look?'”
“He says,” cried Five, “’How does the old man look?’”
“Sometimes he says that,” proceeded Nine. “But anyway, he looks all fresh and shiny and his hair is wet and curls on the front. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Nine, “he goes to work. And when he comes home, how does he look?”
“At me,” said Five.
“But how does he look? He isn’t shiny any more. His hair isn’t smooth. If he scrapes you, he has whiskers, even little ones. He doesn’t jump around. He just goes and sits down. Doesn’t he?”
“I sit on his knee,” said the small chap.
“Oh, you aren’t listening!” cries the elder impatiently. “Listen, will you? I am telling about God.”
“All right.”
“Well, God is the same way as daddy. Daddy has to shave all over again, every morning. He goes to work, and then he comes home all tired. God gets tired. He makes the world all beautiful and shining, with green leaves and grass and flowers.”
“And gym shirts,” said Five.
“Don’t talk!” commands Nine sharply. “And the world is lovely and new, like daddy in the morning.”
“Does God shave?” asked Five.
Nine favors him with a long, grim stare. Five looks abashed.
“But after a while,” continues the elder, “the world gets all used, the grass is used, the trees are used, the flowers get tired and lean over. So God just lets everything go. He just lets the leaves fall off, the grass turn brown, the flowers die, and He lets the winter come, so that He can get up in the morning and start all over again.”
Five had not been entirely attentive. He was only half watching the oak leaves fall. But Nine was carried away by his own philosophy.
“Every day,” he mused, “daddy tries to make himself all new. But every day he comes back and he didn’t stay new. Every year God makes the world new, but it doesn’t stay. So He just lets it go and starts again the next morning.”
“When will it be morning?” asked Five.
“After the winter is gone.”
“And do we go to bed now until the morning?” asked Five.
“Yes, and miss Santa Claus?” demanded Nine with a knowing smile. “And miss hockey in the back yard, and sleigh riding out at Lambton, and snow men and forts?”
“We could do that,” said Five.
“While we sleep all winter?” cried Nine.
“We could be dreaming,” said Five.
Whereupon he abandoned his philosophic brother and dashed down from the steps to get another acorn that had fallen.
Editor’s Note: The nine year old is Murray Clark, while the five year old is Greg Clark Jr. Daughter Elizabeth had not been born yet.
The neighbor, stood on his step staring at the telegram. “Bad news?” I inquired. “Awful!” he said.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 27, 1945.
“Lady Luck,” chuckled Jimmy Frise, “is sure smiling on me!”
“It’s about time,” I suggested.
“This is a real break,” said Jim, “with the coal shortage and all.”
“Coal? Ah,” I alerted.
“Yes, coal,” pursued Jim eagerly. “I was talking to my next door neighbor last night. Just casually chatting. And he says he is going to have to close up his house this winter as his firm is sending him to California.”
“You’re going to get his coal?” I exclaimed.
“No, it’s even better than that,” enthused Jim. “It so happens that he hasn’t laid in any coal at all for this winter, as he was expecting to have to go south for his firm.”
“Go on,” I urged.
“Well, sir,” tantalized Jim, “he tells me that one of his friends has installed a new oil burner. And this friend has two tons of coal in his cellar, left over from last winter. And he wants to get rid of it.”
“He should have no trouble,” I submitted.
“He offered it,” announced Jim sensationally, “to my next door neighbor for nothing. If – and here’s the catch – if my neighbor would arrange to transfer the coal from the other guy’s bin to my neighbor’s.”
“And he’s going south?” I caught on.
“So,” triumphed Jim, “my bin being full, and my neighbor’s empty, what more natural than that my neighbor accepts the offer, stores the two tons in his bin. And I get it!”
“Well, that is a break,” I agreed heartily. “It’ll be no trouble to shift a couple of bags every day or so across the side drive. And that’s all the distance it is.”
“I’ll have to carry it up my neighbor’s cellar stairs,” explained Jim, “and down mine. It’ll be a chore. But think of two tons of coal for nothing! Not a cent. And this year of all years, when coal is millions of tons short.”
“Some people,” I said, “have all the luck.”
“Little breaks like this,” sighed Jim happily, “make life worth while.”
“Isn’t your neighbor going to rent his house while he’s away?” I inquired.
“Not him,” asserted Jim. “He doesn’t want strangers wrecking his place. He’s got a swell little home. Beautiful furniture and lovely new drapes and all. His wife wouldn’t dream of renting it.”
“But there’s a housing shortage,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t seem right for a man to be away all winter and leave a house idle. A house that would shelter half a dozen people. Maybe a returned soldier and his family.”
“Aw, now, never mind the high moral tone,” scoffed Jim. “You’re just jealous of my luck. Would you rent your house if you were going to be away two or three months?”
“Well, of course, my house is full of old books,” I pointed out, “and fishing tackle and stuff. I could hardly have strangers living among all those fragile and perishable things…”
“Everybody, except people without any sentiment,” said Jim, “feels the same way about their homes.”
“It seems to me,” I said righteously, “that the National Housing Board ought to have some say in a matter of this kind. Nobody should be allowed, in times like these, to leave a house untenanted.”
An Ugly Thought
“I suppose,” said Jim, “you’re trying to blackmail half the coal out of me? Well, it’s too far to carry to your house. But it’s just across the alley from me.”
He rubbed his hands appreciatively.
“Who’s going to pay,” I inquired, “for transferring the coal from the other guy’s house to your neighbor’s?”
“Well, that’s just the point,” said Jim amiably. “We called up half a dozen coal dealers and asked them what it would cost, and they just hung up.”
“Hung up?” I questioned.
“Coal dealers,” explained Jim, “are nearly crazy trying to fill their orders now. And are they going to waste time transferring coal from one house to another, coal they have no interest in? Coal they didn’t sell?”
“Aaah,” I mused.
There’s the guy who has the coal,” outlined Jim, “who is installing a new oil burner. Not only does he not need the coal. It is in his way. He’s got to use the space of his coal bins for fuel storage tanks. He wants that coal out of there. Right away.”
“That’s why he will give it away,” I realized.
“Precisely,” said Jim. “And here’s my neighbor, with his bins empty. But he doesn’t need the coal. Because he’s going to be away all winter.”
“And you…” I concluded.
“I, in return for watching over my neighbor’s house,” announced Jim, “can have the coal stored in my next door neighbor’s bins. If.”
“If?” I followed.
“If I can arrange to transfer the coal,” said Jim.
I began to get uneasy.
“Surely there is some trucking company,” I said hastily, “that would undertake the job. After all, you can’t expect busy coal dealers to waste time handling coal they don’t sell. But there are any number of trucking companies that take on all sorts of jobs like this.”
“I’ve tried them,” said Jim. “I spent nearly all last night, with my neighbor, telephoning. I called big truckers and little truckers; I went all through the telephone book and the want ads. I tried little, foreign-sounding, one-truck outfits. I even telephoned some of the big social service organizations and asked them if they knew of any ex-soldiers in need of a one-day job.”
“How far is this guy’s house from you, the one with the new oil burner?” I inquired.
“Only four blocks,” cried Jim. “If I could. find some guy really looking for a job, he could do it with a wheelbarrow.”
“In about 50 trips,” I snorted. “Jim, it’s a nasty job, handling coal.”
“Aw, a truck could do it in one trip,” scorned Jim. “Two tons of coal? Just one trip.”
“Well, no matter how you manage it,” I admitted, “it won’t cost even half as much as two tons of coal. Whatever you pay, you’ll be in on the deal.”
“In Your Hands”
Jim studied me with a friendly and long look.
“Greg,” he said, “there is only one solution and it’s in your hands.”
“My hands!” I protested.
“Yes,” said Jim, tenderly. “You’ve got that little old open car…”
“It’s not so old,” I interrupted sharply, “that it can be used as a coal truck!”
“Aw, now, wait a minute,” soothed Jim. “I’ve thought it all out. I know you wouldn’t want to see me miss a lucky break like this. We’ve been partners too long for you to….”
“Jim,” I warned, “we’ve been partners all these years strictly because neither of us has tried to take advantage of the other.”
“Look,” said Jim, hitching his chair closer to me. “It is obvious you couldn’t carry bags of coal in a closed sedan.”
“You could,” I assured him. “And besides, your sedan is two years older than my touring.”
“Your little open job,” declared Jim, “is famous, and you admit it, for its carrying capacity.”
“True,” I admitted. “It has a record of six deer, three hounds, two hunters and their rifles and baggage.”
“There is nothing like a touring car,” announced Jim admiringly, “for carrying a load. It makes a joke of closed cars. Now, my idea was, I’ll supply the canvas tarpaulins…”
“I wouldn’t think of it, Jim,” I stated firmly.
“I’ll get two, or even three tarpaulins,” explained Jim, making little diagrams with his pencil, “that we can lines the car with. Then, I’ll borrow good, sound coal bags. All you’ve got to do is drive the car. We can make it in two or three trips….”
“Two tons of coal?” I shouted. “In my little touring? In two or three trips?”
“I’ll do all the carrying,” went on Jim hurriedly. “I’ll go down into that guy’s cellar, shovel the coal into the bags. Then I’ll give you a call on the telephone, see? You won’t have to do a thing but come and drive in his side drive. I’ll carry the bags up, very carefully. I won’t fill them too full. In fact, I’ll moisten them, so they won’t shed dust at all.”
“Nothing doing,” I said, getting up.
“Then,” pleaded Jim, “I’ll take the tarpaulins – I’ve got it all figured out, see? – and line your car with them. Line it completely, so that not so much as a single grain of coal dust can escape. Then I place the sacks of coal in, very carefully. On the floor.”
“It would hold about two,” I snorted. “It would take 20 trips.”
“I figure,” said Jim, “that we could do it in three or four trips. After all, what is two tons of coal?”
“Well, it seemed to be a lot,” I reminded him, “when you were feeling so lucky five minutes ago.”
“I mean,” said Jim, “it’s a lot in one sense. But it’s not much in another.”
“I don’t think it’s fair,” I announced, “to propose using my little car for a coal cart when you’ve got a car of your own.”
“But a closed car,” exclaimed Jimmie.
“You can line the inside of your closed car,” I insisted, “with tarpaulins. You can take the back seat out. You could get six bags of coal in it.”
“And smear all the upholstery!” cried Jim.
“How about mine?” I retorted.
“Yours is leather,” said Jim, “or imitation. If a little coal dust gets on that, I can wash it off. That’s the beauty of your car. It’s practical. It’s useful. It’s a real, sensible car.”
“Flattery won’t help,” I informed him.
“Aw,” begged Jim, “be a sport. All you’ve got to do is drive. Maybe three, maybe four short trips. I’ll do all the work, all the carrying.”
We Strike a Bargain
“Jim, I’ve been thinking,” I said. “What kind of coal is this two tons?”
“The guy with the new oil burner,” explained Jim, “is installing gas grates in his fireplaces.”
“I think,” I proposed, “we can make a little bargain here, Jim. If I am let in on this bit of luck, I might be interested in the trucking job.”
“The cannel coal, you mean?” said Jim, a little crestfallen.
“Precisely,” I said. “I can do with four bags of cannel coal. You wouldn’t want to hog all the luck, would you, Jim?”
“Not at all, not at all,” agreed Jim. “Of course you take the cannel coal for your trouble. I should have thought of it in the first place.”
And next day being Saturday, Jim took me in and introduced me to his neighbor. One of those harassed executive types. Just the kind who are sent all over the country by big, soulless corporations.
“Without a thought of me,” he explained, as he glumly outlined his plans for the winter. “That’s the heck of these big international organizations. They just shove you around.”
He came with us over to his friend’s, who was installing the oil burner. In fact, when we got there the oil burner men were already at work on the old coal furnace, taking out the grates, relining the fire-box with new tile and unpacking all the motors and gadgets that go with oil burners.
Jim’s neighbor had already explained to his friend about putting the coal in his bins for Jim’s use.
“I don’t care who gets it or where it goes,” said the new oil-burner owner, “so long as it gets the heck out of here. And soon. I spent half of last week trying to sell it. You’d think with the coal shortage and all, there would be somebody glad to buy two tons of coal,”
“Not even your neighbors?” I inquired. “Who could carry it next door or a couple of doors away?”
“My neighbors,” he replied drily, “are the kind who filled their bins to bursting last summer.”
On the Job
“Well, it’s a great break for us,” I assured him. “I’m getting the cannel coal in return for the use of my open car as a truck.”
“The cannel coal?” exclaimed Jim’s neighbor. “Oh, you’re taking that, are you?”
“We figured that was a fair break,” explained Jim. “I get the blower coal and he gets the four bags of cannel.”
“Good, good,” said Jim’s neighbor. “A real idea. Well, boys, I’d like to stay and help with the job, but I’ve got…”
“My dear man,” protested Jim, “don’t think of it. You’re doing enough, lending me your cellar, putting me in touch with a break of luck like this.”
And he and the oil-burner enthusiast went upstairs, leaving Jim and me face to face with the binful of blower.
Jim had borrowed three coal sacks from neighbors and had two old ones of his own that, in palmier days2, had delivered cannel coal to his house in tidy orders. You remember the days?
He also had two old brown dunnage bags, not very substantial now, with holes in them. But he had brought some newspaper to put inside to cover the holes.
With these for our containers, we proceeded to organize the job. True to his promise, Jim had obtained two big tarpaulins from among his wide circle of neighbors and acquaintances, and with these we lined my touring car to make a sort of large dustproof well or tank into which we could stow the coal sacks.
“We’ll move the cannel coal first,” I suggested, “and drop it off at my place.”
“Okay,” agreed Jim.
But when we looked for it, we found it in an outer bin, and at that very minute, one of the oil-burner workmen had placed a large, heavy crate full of motors, electric fuse boxes and other gadgets right on top of the cannel coal bin.
“I’ll have that open and distributed,” said the mechanic, “before you come for your second load. Leave it for now.”
So we proceeded with the blower coal, first filling all our five coal sacks and two dunnage bags, then carrying them up the cellar stairs to my waiting car.
Jim did the actual carrying while I came behind, supporting the bag with my shoulder. A bag of that soft, dusty blower coal is mighty heavy load. And more than that, it is a dirty load. We hadn’t carried two bags before we were already disappearing from view.
We got all seven bags into my car.
“At this rate,” I said, spitting coal, “It will take us about five or six trips.”
“We’ll see,” said Jim. “You can’t estimate a bin of coal by the eye.”
I drove the load carefully the four blocks to Jim’s side drive, and there we found Jim’s neighbor awaiting us to show us which cellar window to put the coal through.
“If you don’t mind, boys,” he said, “I’ve left the hose, so you can spray it as it goes in, to keep the dust down.”
“Okay,” said Jim. “Okay.”
Love’s Labor Lost
And as Jim carried each bag back, I would stand by, and as he lowered the bag and tilted it, I would turn the hose nozzle for the finest spray and let is sizzle in the cellar window.
It was a good idea, even though it moistened us and added to our murk.
On the second trip, I noticed the crate of motors was still on top of the cannel coal. “I’ll have it out of there by the next load,” said the mechanic.
On the third trip, the cannel coal was still unavailable.
“It will take only two more trips,” I explained to the mechanic.
“I’ll open the crate within 10 minutes,” he replied, his hands full of wrenches.
We made the whole job on the fifth trip, but it left no bags available, nor any room in my car for the cannel coal which was now available, the crate having been broken apart and the motors removed.
“I’ll come back for it,” I said thickly from behind a mask that now covered me like a fabric.
And as we arrived in the side drive and started carrying the last bags back to the bin window, a telegraph boy on a bicycle arrived and rang the neighbor’s bell.
He came out and greeted us heartily.
“This the last?” he inquired, as he opened the telegram.
“The last,” heaved Jim, hoisting a bag while I got the next one ready.
The neighbor, stood on his step staring at the telegram.
“Bad news?” I inquired.
“Awful!” he said. “This places most embarrassing position.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“How will I ever explain to Jimmie?” he said, looking at the wire helplessly.
I began to feel limp.
“The head office,” he read, “has changed program stop You will not be going California stop Acknowledge stop.”
“Not going,” I said hoarsely, “to California?”
He waved the telegram weakly.
Jim came from the back of the house with the empty sack.
“Jim,” said the neighbor brokenly. “Read this!”
Jim took the wire in his grimy hand and read it. Then read it again, his lips moving so as to take it in better.
“I’m so sorry, Jim,” said the neighbor.
“But…” said Jim… “well… but…”
“I’ll pay you,” said the neighbor eagerly, “I’ll pay you both for transferring the coal. I’ll pay you whatever you like, whatever is fair, whatever the usual charge is for…”
“How can you pay us?” I croaked. “Are we coal carriers?”
“Not at all,” said Jim, firmly. “It was just an unfortunate misunderstanding, a coincidence…”
“Do you mind,” I inquired bitterly, “if I take the cannel coal?”
“Certainly not, certainly not,” said the neighbor. “By all means. That will repay you for all your trouble. Your car…”
I looked at my poor little bow-legged car, still with its load of blower. What a filthy sight.
“Come on, Jim,” I said grimly.
And we hoisted the last five bags, with the neighbor now hastily helping, with his fingertips on the ears of the sacks, as we dumped them down his cellar window.
“I can’t tell you,” he kept repeating, “I can’t begin to tell you…”
“Skip it,” I assured him.
When the car was empty, I bade Jim good-afternoon and drove straight back for the cannel coal.
When I got down among the oil burner installation crew, the cannel coal bin was empty.
“Who took it?” I demanded smudgily.
“A guy took it,” said the head mechanic, “in three big ash cans.”
I went up and rapped on the kitchen door and the head of the house answered.
“The cannel coal?” I demanded.
“What of it?” he inquired.
“It’s gone,” I said.
“Who took it?” he inquired astonished.
“Don’t you know?” I grated.
“Me?” he said. “How do I know? I don’t care who gets it. So long as it…”
But I backed out, drove home, had a bath.
And even the bath water smelled fishy.
Editor’s Notes: For whatever reason, this story is longer than usual.
I’m not sure about the difference better types of coal and how they would be used in old coal furnaces. Cannel coal is mentioned as more expensive as it burned with a bright flame, was easily lit, and left virtually no ash, presumably compared to blower coal. ↩︎
“palmier days” means “back in the days of more prosperity”. ↩︎
If you are sick of the soft, fickle hand of city brotherhood, head for some place beyond North Bay.
If you are seeking the Land of the Golden Rule, you will find it, chances are, in a blackened and forsaken and dismal country lying between Cobalt and Englehart…
—
An old man comes limping up the hill to the relief car at Charlton. He must be all of seventy. His overcoat is six sizes too large for him. A boy’s cap perches on top of his old grey head. His broken shoes are sodden with slush. He seeks each spot he sets his foot. He winces with each step.
As he approaches the little group huddled about the door of the lone express car, a woman sitting on a box rises to give the old man her place.
“Sit down, woman,” says the old man. “A fine day, everybody?”
It isn’t. But they all agree it is.
He rests against the car. Presently his turn comes to stand before the opulent open door.
“Now, dad, what?” says the constable dishing out supplies.
“Somethin’ warm for an old woman and an old man,” says the old fellow.
“Well, you’ve got a coat,” begins the constable.
“Oh, ’tain’t for me,” says the old man. “It’s for an old couple, neighbors of mine. They are too old to come, so I come for them. They…”
“Were you burned out?” queries the constable.
“Me and them and the whole concession,” says the old man. “We are all starting over again in W—‘s barn. Now, the old woman, she needs a cloak…”
“How far have you come?”
“Oh, three, four mile.”
Out come priceless things from the express car – coats, sweaters, stockings, heavy wool underclothes.
The old man’s arms heap up. A boy steps over and says —
“I’ll help you carry them, mister.”
“You go help your own father,” says the old man, sternly.
And down the hill he goes limping, under a large bundle tied in a sheet.
A neighbor.
—
A big, mustached man is standing at a crossroads, his back to the driving rain.
Every party that comes trudging up the road has women and children in it. The big fellow halts them all.
“Where are you heading?”
“Englehart,” they answer.
“It’ll be dark in an hour. Never make it to-night. My place is half a mile up the side road here. Something to eat and room for the woman and kids in the house if you’ll share the barn with me.”
“Thanks, mister.”
The heavy-hearted little parties turn off the lonely road up the muddy side road.
And the neighbor stands with his big back to the spinning rain, watching up the desolate highroad.
—
A middle-aged man sits in the shelter of a bit of ruined brick wall. In his arms is cuddled a baby in a piece of soiled white blanket.
“A pretty baby,” I say to him. “Is it your only child?”
He blushes with the violence of the northerner.
“This ain’t mine,” he says. “Mine is all growed up. This one belongs to a young woman that took sick and they took her out to New Liskeard in a buggy. I’m carrying her baby in.”
“Why, it’s miles!” I exclaim.
“Well, I’ve come miles. But I’ll meet a car pretty soon, I figure. Anyway, it don’t matter – he’s nice and warm.”
—
Amid the ruins of what once was a house, a barn and a cow stable, a broad young man is toiling with an axe and some long nails and blackened remnants of timber.
Both his hands are swathed in dirty bandages. Above the bandages his wrists show scarlet and raw. He handles his axe gingerly, clumsily.
He proudly surveys the pitiful little lean-to he has made out of brittle charred boards.
“What’s this you’re making?” I ask.
“Well,” says he, resting gratefully. “It’s a sort of a cow shed. If my hands weren’t burned I could cut some logs out of that bit of swale over yonder that escaped the burn. But this’ll do fine, for a while.”
“Was this your homestead?”
“No, it belonged to a fellow I worked for, summer before last. He got all messed up saving his own kids and his neighbors, so I says to him I’ll fix up a shelter for his cows.”
—
If you don’t believe these legends, go and see for yourself.
Editor’s Note: Greg was sent to cover the Great Haileybury Fire that ravaged the Timiskaming District from October 4 to 5, 1922. It has been called one of the ten worst natural disasters in Canadian history.
“Jim,” I said, “don’t look now but there’s a rumor starting.”
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 21, 1939.
If you wear an Alpine hat or if your hair is cut like a Prussian officer’s, there’s no telling where you will end up
“Did you hear,” asked Jimmie Frise excitedly, “about the two Germans that…”
“Were caught,” I carried on sarcastically, “trying to poison the waterworks and were…”
“Shot,” cried Jimmie, “after they had been made to dig their own graves?”
“Yes,” I informed him, “I heard that one. And I heard the ones about the German with the bottle full of germs, and about the ones that were caught filing the struts of airplanes, and the one about the German that was poisoning candy. I’ve heard all the rumors.”
“Don’t you believe them?” demanded Jim indignantly. “Don’t you believe that there are hundreds of Germans locked up in Canada’s prisons and barracks? Every one of them caught in the act?”
“I suppose,” I retorted, “that it is our patriotic duty to believe rumors.”
“What else is there to believe?” sighed Jim. “When the censorship goes on, the rumors begin.”
“We can still submit to censorship,” I explained, “and not give way to every childish rumor that comes along. I’m willing to bet that every rumor we’ve heard about local people was started either in fun or in spite.”
“I doubt it,” said Jim darkly. “Those Germans.”
“I don’t hold any brief for any German1,” I admitted heartily. “In the last war, I used to read what the statesmen said about us fighting the kaiser and not the German people. And I always used to wonder who the heck that was across No Man’s Land shooting at me and heaving trench mortars over. Now they’re talking about us not fighting the German people but Hitler and his gang. I still think it’s the German people we’re fighting. And we’re fighting them because they’re such dang fools to let themselves be ruled by any old type of gangster that comes along, whether it’s a titled Hohenzollern or a house painter.”
“Now you’re talking,” agreed Jim.
“We’re fighting the German people,” I insisted, “so long as they follow these crackpot leaders who think they can conquer the world. We’ve got to keep fighting them until we teach them that they can’t go and conquer the world, no matter what kind of leader they follow.”
“I’ve known some good guys who came of German blood,” admitted Jim.
“That’s what I’m trying to get at,” I clinched. “Most of these people the rumors are about are the grandsons or great-grandsons of men who left Germany because they couldn’t stand the Germans. They came to this country for the same reasons we did. To escape from oppression or misfortune and to find a new life and new freedom in a new world. Probably these German grandparents left Germany for the same reasons we’re fighting Germany today.”
Growing Like a Snowball
“We had Germans in our battery in the last war,” admitted Jim.
“In my battalion,” I recounted, “we had dozens of men of German descent who were some of the best soldiers we had. I remember one especially. He could even talk German, though his grandmother came out from Germany as a child. One of the last things I ever saw him do was climb up the corner of a pill box at Passchendaele and drop Mills bombs down the air hole on 19 of his blood relations.”
“He was a Canadian all right,” agreed Jim.
“I used to take him out on listening patrols,” I recalled, “and we’d sit outside the German wire listening to them muttering and mumbling in their trench. And he translated.”
“It’s too bad to circulate rumors about people like him,” Jim submitted.
“Most rumors start,” I repeated, “in fun or out of spite. Just for fun, a man tells somebody a ridiculous tale about somebody else they both know. The story is repeated, all in fun. Pretty soon, somebody who doesn’t know the party hears the tale, and away it goes, getting bigger and bigger, like a snowball. All these rumors sooner or later get into the hands of some born story-teller. And he, looking at the rumor, says: ‘What a poor, puny little tale that is.” And he sets to work to make it dramatic, with a punch, with some quality to it. Lo, a rumor is born!”
“I can see that clearly,” said Jim. “In my own time, I’ve improved a story now and then.”
“The spite rumors are worse,” I pointed out. “For example, I know a German who is Canadian to the core. He is an athlete, and he makes his living teaching gymnastics and athletics. There are plenty of second-rate athletes who envy him his job. The war was not a week old before I heard rumors that this man had been caught putting acid on airplane wires up at one of the big airdromes. I helped trace this story back. It took two days. But we traced it right back to a second-rate athlete who thought he had a fair chance of stealing the German’s job, now that war was on.”
“Could Canadians hold jobs in Germany now?” demanded Jim.
“Probably not,” I confessed. “But that is not the point. The point is, this is not Germany. And this German is as Canadian as it is possible to be without being born here. I know lots of Canadians who were born here who are really less Canadian, in their hearts, than plenty of foreigners who have come here because they loved this country.”
“We can’t trust anybody, though, in time of war,” stated Jim. “If we go around with a sappy faith in everybody, we’ll get skunked sure as fate.”
“You can trust human nature, I decreed, “to see to it that no German will get away without some hostility, even to the third and fourth generation. For one of us who won’t believe rumors, there are twenty who will. For one of us who will be rational about foreigners, there are a hundred who will be irrational, who will see mischief in every angle of the foreigner, who will notify police, who will watch and guard. All I suggest is, that a few of us keep alive a little feeble flame of tolerance and common sense, so that it will be ready to stoke up again after the war is over. I’d hate to see the sacred fire die out.”
“But don’t let us get so innocent,” countered Jim, “that we let the country get overrun with Nazis.”
“And when I’m looking for Nazis,” I retorted, “I’m not going to confine my attention to people with German names.”
“Here’s a note from the editor,” said Jim. “He bawls us out for drawing all the soldiers in old-fashioned uniforms. He wants us to draw the troops in the new uniform.”2
“It makes them look like gas-station attendants,” I scoffed.
“They look like skiers,” snorted Jim. “Give me the good old army uniform, every time.”
“Imagine a Highlander done up in baggy pants and a blouse,” I submitted.
“Well, the editor is the editor,” sighed Jim. “And if he wants us to draw the troops in the new-fangled outfit, okay. We’ll have to see what the new uniform looks like.”
To See the New Uniform
“I’ve seen pictures of it,” I stated, “but I haven’t seen any of the boys wearing it.”
“We ought to go out and look around the armories,” suggested Jim.
“We can drop off at Exhibition Park on our way home,” I said.
Which we did. And I took along my little candid camera for some shots of any men we might see in the new uniform, to help Jimmie with his drawings.
But all we saw were squads and platoons of husky lads in the same uniform Jimmie and I wore twenty-five years ago.
“I suppose,” said Jim, “they’re wearing out all the old stuff first. But how about taking some snapshots to show the editor? We can write a nice sarcastic note back to him enclosing photos.”
So I moved about, choosing the best looking squads, and getting the sun behind me, and I shot some long range infinity snaps, and got a few close-ups as the squads marched near us. Jimmie got out his drawing pad and made some sketches, too. Jimmie can always make a soldier look more like a soldier than a soldier really is.
One of the squads that had marched past several times finally halted near us and the boys were standing idly watching us, when a civilian who had been observing us take pictures and draw sketches, hurried over to the sergeant drilling the squad and whispered to him.
I saw the sergeant eyeing us narrowly, and the civilian giving us a very hostile look.
“Jim,” I said, turning aside and trying to hide my camera, “don’t look now, but there’s a rumor starting.”
Jim glanced up and saw the sergeant bending his ear to the agitated civilian. Jim turned his back so as to conceal the drawing pad.
“Let’s go,” I offered.
We started to stroll away.
“Hye, there,” said the sergeant, striding towards us. The civilian trotted eagerly in the sergeant’s wake. “What are you two up to?”
“We’re a couple of newspapermen,” I explained. “We were just making some notes.”
“Look at his hat,” hissed the civilian. He was a baleful individual, with a long suspicious jaw.
“Why, it’s an ordinary alpine model…” I began.
“And look at the other fellow’s hair,” hissed the stranger to the sergeant. “Sticking straight up. Like Hindenburg’s! Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Have you any permission,” demanded the sergeant, cautiously, “to be on this parade ground making pictures and drawing plans?”
“Look,” said Jim. “Do you call those plans?”
The sergeant studied Jim’s sketches and the stranger looked over his shoulder.
“What do you call them?” demanded the sergeant. “Do you call those pictures of us? Is this an insult to the uniform?”
“Those are just rough sketches,” explained Jim, lamely. “Just ideas I can develop later.”
“If I was to show these to my boys,” said the sergeant, “you’d have something rough, all right.”
“Arrest them,” hissed the civilian. “Put them under guard. With bayonets.”
“I’ve a good mind to,” said the sergeant. “I certainly think the little bird has a German hat. And the hair on the tall guy certainly looks foreign to me.”
Suspicious Characters
It was then a movement in the squad caught my eye. One of the boys in the squad was bent double in agony, and three or four others were having a hard time to stand steady like soldiers. As the young man straightened up. I recognized him as a former office boy on The Star, and when he caught my eye, he waved a hand at me in gleeful derision.
“Here, sergeant,” I cried, “there’s a lad knows who we are. That fourth man in the front rank. Call him over.”
“Perkins,” commanded the sergeant.
And the boy fell out and came awkwardly over, saluting with his rifle because he remembered I used to be a major in all the war stories I used to tell the office boys in bygone years.
“Do you know these men?” demanded the sergeant.
“Why,” interrupted the civilian, when he saw Perkins, “this is the lad who called my attention to these two spies.”
“What’s this?” I cried. And the sergeant and Jimmie cried: “How’s that?”
“Why, only 10 minutes ago, over by that tree,” said the civilian, his long, suspicious jaw getting kind of black with blushes, “when this platoon was resting, this very same young man came over to me and pointed out these two spies and asked me to sneak around and see if they weren’t taking snapshots and making drawings. He said I was to tell the sergeant, if I saw that’s what they were doing.”
“Perkins!” said the sergeant.
“Why,” said the civilian, bitterly, “it was even him who pointed out the German hat the little man is wearing and the way the taller man’s hair sticks up.”
“Perkins,” repeated the sergeant sternly for Perkins was just standing there grinning from ear to ear.
“It was just a little joke,” said Perkins. “I know these two gentlemen very well indeed.”
And he introduced us to the sergeant, and the sergeant was very happy to meet us because his wife reads our stuff every week and his little boy wants to be a cartoonist some day, like Jimmie. In fact, the sergeant has a bunch of drawings the kid has done, and he would like to bring them down some day for Jimmie to have a look at.
Meanwhile, the stranger was slowly oozing away, trying to make his escape without being noticed.
“Hey,” called the sergeant, “just a second, mister. Don’t feel bad about this. Come here a minute.”
“No hard feelings,” said Jim. “It was just a joke on all of us.”
“I’ll attend to Perkins,” declared the sergeant grimly. “If there’s anything I hate in a platoon, it’s a witty guy. However, I’ll let him down easy, because he may be the means of me having a famous cartoonist for a son, some day, hey, Mr. Frise?”
“You bet,” said Jim, stowing his drawing pad with its rough notes, so as to spare the sergeant’s feelings.
“I only want to say to you, sir,” said the sergeant, tapping the suspicious civilian on the chest, “that you did quite right, sir. If you see or hear of anything suspicious, it is your duty to call it to the attention of the nearest authority, in this case, me.”
“As a matter of fact, sir,” replied the stranger firmly, “that is what I am doing, hanging around the parade grounds. I’m too old to be of much use to the country, but I can keep my eye peeled for suspicious characters.”
“That’s the idea, sir,” said the sergeant, waving the gentleman on.
So it all worked out just as it should. And we gave young Perkins, the scalawag, all our cigarettes to divvy up with the squad. And as we departed, I glanced back in time to see the sergeant get a handful of them.
Editor’s Note:
“Not to hold any brief” means not to support something. ↩︎
The uniform worn by soldiers in World War 2 was different than the first war. At the very start, there was not enough of the new uniform so some had to wear the old one until they could be produced. ↩︎
